Robot Software Engineer

Rhoda Ai
Palo Alto, US

Who this role is best for

Best suited to mid-level robotics engineers with hands-on hardware experience working in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

Best fit for

  • Engineers comfortable debugging across full software-hardware stacks.
    — “Ability to debug across the full stack — from driver-level issues to application behavior on live hardware
  • Candidates who thrive in early-stage hardware development cycles.
    — “Prior work on early-stage hardware programs (prototype or pre-production robots)
  • Developers experienced with robotics middleware in production contexts.
    — “Experience with ROS/ROS2 or similar robotics middleware in production or research contexts

Things to consider

  • Requires onsite work with physical hardware in Palo Alto.
    — “Comfort working directly with physical hardware in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
  • Role involves building foundational infrastructure, not just application features.
    — “Build and maintain the networking and communication infrastructure that connects onboard robot systems

How to stand out

  • Showcase projects where you implemented OTA updates for robot fleets.
    — “Experience with over-the-air (OTA) software updates and deployment infrastructure for robot fleets
  • Highlight cross-functional collaboration with ML and control teams.
    — “Collaborate closely with ML, perception, and control engineers to ensure onboard systems
  • Demonstrate experience optimizing low-latency data transport systems.
    — “Background in streaming systems or low-latency data transport for real-time robot operation
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Mid

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

Skills & requirements

Required

Robotics SoftwareC++PythonRustNetworkingCloud StorageRos/ros2

Preferred

Telemetry And Observability SystemsPerception PipelinesControl SystemsOTA Software Updates

Stack & domain

C++PythonRustGrpcDdsMqttWebsocketsAWSGCPS3GcsRosRos2RoboticsAI

About the role

Original posting from Rhoda Ai via Ashby

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $400M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

We're looking for a Robot Software Engineer to help build and maintain the broad software foundation that keeps our humanoid robots running. You'll work across the full onboard stack — from networking and communication infrastructure to perception and control integration, data collection pipelines, and the tooling that lets us continue to develop and improve our robots in the field.

What You'll Do

  • Build and maintain the networking and communication infrastructure that connects onboard robot systems to each other, to the cloud, and to teleoperation and monitoring systems
  • Own data collection pipelines that capture sensor, telemetry, and behavioral data from the robot and reliably upload it to cloud storage for model training
  • Build and maintain telemetry and observability systems — giving the team real-time visibility into robot health, system state, and field performance
  • Develop internal tooling that accelerates robot software development: deployment pipelines, logging infrastructure, debugging tools, and field testing utilities
  • Contribute to perception and control integration — helping connect sensor pipelines, onboard models, and control systems into a cohesive, reliable stack
  • Support bring-up and field testing of new hardware revisions, debugging issues across the full onboard software stack
  • Collaborate closely with ML, perception, and control engineers to ensure onboard systems meet the data quality and reliability requirements of model training and deployment

What We're Looking For

  • 3+ years of experience in robotics software engineering, embedded systems, or a closely related field
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals in C++, Python, or Rust
  • Experience with networking, IPC, and communication protocols for hardware-software systems (e.g., gRPC, DDS, MQTT, WebSockets)
  • Familiarity with cloud storage and data upload pipelines (e.g., AWS, GCP, S3, GCS)
  • Experience with ROS/ROS2 or similar robotics middleware in production or research contexts
  • Ability to debug across the full stack — from driver-level issues to application behavior on live hardware
  • Comfort working directly with physical hardware in fast-moving, ambiguous environments

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

  • Experience building telemetry and observability systems for embedded or edge platforms
  • Familiarity with perception pipelines or control systems and how they interact with the broader robot stack
  • Background in streaming systems or low-latency data transport for real-time robot operation
  • Experience with over-the-air (OTA) software updates and deployment infrastructure for robot fleets
  • Exposure to learned perception or control models and their integration into real-time robot stacks
  • Prior work on early-stage hardware programs (prototype or pre-production robots)

Why This Role

  • Your work is the connective tissue of the robot — the networking, data, and tooling infrastructure you build directly determines how fast the team can develop, debug, and improve our humanoids in the field
  • Work across the full onboard stack alongside perception, control, and ML engineers on a platform that is pushing the frontier of what humanoid robots can do
  • High ownership in a small, fast-moving team where your contributions shape the development velocity and reliability of the next generation of humanoid robots

Source: Rhoda Ai careers (Ashby)

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